Two Interesting Developments In The Social Business Space

Two interesting developments happened in the social business space this week. It’s clear that that the space is evolving as the demand for social business services grows.

First, one the “Big Four” consultancy firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers just announced the acquisition of social media strategy firm, Ants Eye View. This makes complete sense as other management consulting firms are trying to carve out their piece of the social business market i.e. Deloitte making strategic hires and McKinsey publishing reports and white papers. PwC is instantly a player in this space with the addition of some really smart social strategists with defined capabilities, IP, experience and case studies. According to this article, the goal is to combine Ant’s Eye View’s social media strategy and digital marketing skills with PwC’s Advisory business that will build upon the firm’s growing Management Consulting customer impact and customer engagement capabilities. I know many of the Ant’s personally and they are all top notch, super smart people. Congrats to Sean O’Driscoll and team. Here is more from Jake McKee on the acquisition.

Secondly, Eastwick, a Silicon Valley based Public Relations firm earlier this week announced the launch of the new independent consulting firm called SocialXDesign. According to the press release, the firm will combine expertise in strategic marketing and public engagement with behavior research. The CEO, Giovanni Rodriguez is a former Deloitte consultant and CMO of BroadVision. I have met him a few times and he’s definitely a smart guy. The chief strategy officer will be Toby Chaudhuri, a Washington D.C. public affairs consultant.

So the trend is clear. PR firms such as Edelman, Weber, Ogilvy and Eastwick have fully defined social business capabilities and teams. Will other PR firms follow suit? What about the management consulting firms? Are they serious about building out their social business capabilities?

Michael Brito has been making things happen online since 1996 with a legit hustle. He gets mad when the 49ers lose, really mad. Feel free to follow him on Twitter.

Christopher Regan

“Are they serious about building out their social business capabilities?”
C’mon — Deloitte, PwC — they’d build a practice around water-ice if they smelled revenue — thus, they’re bad examples –, but McKinsey and other serious firms have the communications skills/talent to lead, organize and metric their clients’ communities. And, there it is, it’s not “mailing lists” or “users” anymore, it’s the enterprises’ community members. Great post as always, Michael – I very much enjoy your blog.

http://www.britopian.com Michael Brito

Tim,

These are all excellent, thank you!

Brito

http://twitter.com/KareAnderson Kare Anderson

That’s why I like books like Mark Fidelman’s Socialized! that offer an actionable roadmap that complements your view Michael… don’t do social for the sake of social but to leverage value for enterprise — all stakeholders. Eager to see you at BusinessNext where we’ll both be speaking

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